Consider: An official from the ruling Workers Party was detained as he tried to board a flight with $100,000 in cash stuffed down his pants.

Then there was the case of the "events planner" who, after being questioned by congressional investigators for allegedly providing prostitutes to politicians, speculated in public about running for office herself.

More seriously, the Brazilian president's chief of staff, three top ruling party officials and the head of the lower house of Congress have resigned over allegations ranging from bribing legislators to running a $30 million campaign slush fund.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is widely known as Lula, has not been implicated in the widening scandal and seems likely to survive the last year of his term. But many polls suggest that Lula's 2006 re-election chances are fading.

Many analysts, however, point out that vote-buying and other corrupt practices have long littered the political landscape in Brazil.

They also warn that the crookedness will continue in the most populous country in South America unless the government reins in excessive campaign spending as well as mercenary political parties that are willing to be bought off.

"You see corruption all over Latin America, but Brazil has raised it to a new art," said Bruce Bagley, a Latin America expert at the University of Miami. "It's disillusioning."

Brazilians used to shrug off bad behavior by politicians.

In the 1950s and '60s, voters re-elected the unscrupulous governor of Sao Paulo state because he was viewed as an effective leader, according to Brazilian law professor Augusto Zimmermann. He said the governor campaigned on the slogan: "He steals but he makes things happen."

Since then, attitudes have changed.

In 1992, massive street protests helped persuade President Fernando Collor de Mello to step down rather than face impeachment on corruption charges, a watershed event here that was supposed to usher in a new era of ethical government.

Though the episode never was fully investigated, several lawmakers were accused of receiving huge payoffs to support an amendment to the constitution that allowed Cardoso to run for re-election in 1998.

Things got worse when Lula's Workers Party took power.

Founded in 1980 by socialists, labor leaders and religious activists, the party fought for the return of democracy during the final years of Brazil's military dictatorship and nurtured a reputation for honesty.

The party's longtime flag-bearer is the bearded Lula, a former union organizer who rose from poverty to become the nation's first working-class president and an inspiration to leftists around the world.

But once Lula was elected in 2002, the Workers Party "turned out to be just like any other traditional party," said Octavio Amorim Neto, a political analyst in Rio de Janeiro. "That's why people are so depressed."

Although Lula won 61 percent of the vote, his party took just 17 percent of the seats in the Congress and was forced to court rival parties to gain a majority. Over the years, however, a bewildering array of 27 parties has sprung up in Brazil. Some exist mainly to extract Cabinet posts and pork-barrel projects, Neto and other analysts say.

For the right price, parties will join a governing coalition while individual legislators can be persuaded to switch to parties that support the administration.

In fact, more than one-third of the nation's 592 legislators have changed parties since Lula was elected.

"They are just out for their own slice of the pie," Bagley said.

At first, Lula floundered as he tried to build a coalition. Part of the problem was that his party was divided after he adopted conservative economic policies endorsed by big business.

Kickback accusations

To maintain unity, Lula gave most ministry posts to Workers Party stalwarts. What's more, his tight fiscal policies limited the public works projects that could be held out to potential partners in Congress.

With little from the conventional patronage system to offer, the Workers Party resorted to a more direct form of back-scratching.

In June, Congressman Roberto Jefferson charged that the Lula administration kept its governing coalition together, in part, by appointing members of allied political parties to the boards of state-run companies, positions that were used by the politicians to extract kickbacks from contractors.

Jefferson, who resigned last month after his Labor Party was accused of taking payoffs from post office contractors, also claimed that the Workers Party paid some lawmakers monthly allowances of $12,500 for their support on key votes.

"To a certain extent, the people in the Workers Party despise the give-and-take of the democratic process," said David Fleischer, who writes a political newsletter from Brasilia, the capital. "They found it was a lot more expedient to simply buy people off."

Some of the money apparently was handed out even before Lula took office. For instance, the head of the Liberal Party claimed his organization was paid more than $1 million by the Workers Party to back Lula's 2002 bid for president.

Evidence also has emerged that Lula's top advisers took out millions of dollars in undeclared bank loans and that the Workers Party was collecting more than $1 million a month from the state-owned electric company.

Now, three congressional inquiries are looking into alleged illegal practices by Lula's administration. Four legislators already have resigned, and 16 more face expulsion.

"The Lula regime has accomplished many firsts in Brazilian history," wrote political scientist and Brazil expert James Petras on the left-wing CounterPunch Web site. "No government party has had more top party leaders, congresspeople and functionaries under investigation for fraud in such a brief period."

Lula has admitted that his party committed campaign-finance irregularities but has denied personal involvement.

"We will overcome, with courage and calm, the current political turbulence," Lula said in a recent speech. He added that the guilty will be punished "be they friends or enemies."

So far, there has been little enthusiasm for impeachment proceedings against the president.

Many business leaders and other power brokers here fear that removing Lula could throw the economy into turmoil. Political rivals, meanwhile, may prefer to face off against a scandal-weakened Lula in next year's election.

No matter who wins, many experts warn that a corrupt government is nearly guaranteed unless the country gets a handle on its immense political spoils system.

Costly campaigns

While American presidents can appoint about 2,000 federal officials, Brazilian presidents can name nearly 30,000, which often leads to abuses.

In addition, Fleischer, the analyst in Brasilia, says Brazil's political spectrum could be represented by just five or six political parties instead of 27, which would mean less vote-buying.

Others focus on the costly nature of Brazilian politics.

Most congressional seats are hotly contested, and politicians rely on expensive television commercials to get their messages out. Once in office, they are expected to repay their supporters with jobs or perks.

And because penalties for violations amount to a slap on the wrist, campaign spending laws are often ignored, says Argelina Figueiredo, a political analyst at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning, a think tank in Rio de Janeiro. "If there is no control over spending and no punishment," she says, "this will go on forever."